Still seeing referral spam

Hi Bookmonster,

I tested the domain above against both grubdujour.com and https://www.grubdujour.com which worked as expected and was blocked.

However, I see that if we use an IDN to ASCII conversion, which is what happens in some browsers when UTF8-based languages such as those with cyrillic character – the spam is getting through.

The ASCII version of that domain is “xn--q1a.xn--b1aube0e.xn--c1acygb.xn--p1ai”

I will work on an update today and over the weekend which should ensure better matching for both the IDN and ASCII versions of the hostname so that these spammers are more effectively blocked.

Are you seeing any spam sneak through on English-character domains?

Thanks!

Bookmonster,

I’m working on a new update and would like your input please.

The newest change incorporates the logic I described in my previous post. However, I see that it requires a specific PHP library in order to work.

Do you know if your server has PHP5.3+ w/ International package? For example, if you were running ubunutu, you can install by using the command
`apt-get install php5-intl

I’ve included fall-back support in case a server doesn’t have this library installed.

I’m trying to gauge how many of my users can support this native PHP function via the intl library, or if I need to use a different method.

The new update should be ready within the next few hours if you want to try it out for yourself.

Thanks,
Jacob

Hi Bookmonster,

Please download version 1.1. It has been optimized for non ASCII languages and tested on several versions of PHP, both with and without php-intl package installed.

I would appreciate if you could report back after a few days to see if your analytics have cleared up.

Thanks!

P.S – If you enjoy the plugin and the support I provide, I would greatly appreciate your feedback and a 5 star rating.